[EitB PBEM LVI] coldrain emerges from the shadows

[coldrain]

Turn 100

Heavy damage from spell casting, most of my units are somewhat wounded. The amount of fireballs is too much, I need to do some damage while I can. I could retreat with my army, but I would lose my capital (heroic epic) and maybe also the deer resource, so I could not continue building fyrdwells. So I decided to attack with every unit that had more than 50% win chance. The reason I get decent odds is that Mig’s army is on a flatland tile and many of his defending swords are wounded as well.

First, I attack with fyrdwellsand then with PoLs. I managed to kill 5 swords and lost one fyrdwell and two priests myself. Rest of the units get less than 10% odds, so I halt the attack. Looking back at the positioning of my units two turns ago, I could have maybe left the fyrdwells further back (out of range of fireballs) and tank the spell damage with fawns/PoLs/hunters. This way I would have had more full health fyrdwells for the counter attack. This is the meagre defending garrison left after the movements (I remembered to move the worrkers to a safer spot after taking the picture):

Turn 101

Miguelito and Q are now at war. Too late to assist me anyway. I lost capital and Darkroot Garden. I recaptured the latter city and retreated towards my new capital of Undead Burg with rest of the units. Upgraded one warrior to a fyrdwell in New Londo Ruins. Situation and power graph at the end of turn:

 

To my knowledge, neither Q nor Bing are near mages or other game breaking units to contest Miguelito. I guess that Q can use his world spell when spellcasting is enabled in a couple of turns. Even then, I’m doubtful if the wizards can be stopped. Overall, very impressive army and tactics by Miguelito: it has been excruciatingly hard to try to counter his spell casters. And his use of the world spell definitely stunted any chance I had for an effective defence.

[coldrain]

Turn 102

I’m down to the last city:

Q captured and razed the coastal city that Miguelito had taken. All other cities were captured and held by Miguelito. Wizard task force is approaching and I have only a few units left defending. I drafted an additional warrior, just as a final symbol of resistance. I expect to be eliminated before my next turn. Looking at the power graph, Miguelito still has the largest military. Q will most likely trigger Hippus world spell in two turns, let’s see if he can do any meaningful damage. For the record, I was unable to kill any adepts or wizards during the war, only swords that are easily replaceable. I think I made three mistakes after the first war ended:

1. I should have tried to recruit Bing to join the coalition against Mig. After Aurorarcher fell faster than I anticipated, Miguelito will knock everyone out one-by-one. I’m bad at AI-diplo, so not sure how I could have messaged this. Also, I don’t know why Q didn’t use the opportunity to snipe the former Aurorarcher lands with his horsemen while Mig’s main army is invading me.
   
2. I positioned my defensive units badly after the peace treaty expired. I should have garrisoned most of my archers to the capital, as that was the only city that truly mattered (massive production, completed training buildings, heroic epic). Now Miguelito was able to whittle down my border garrisons with minimal casualties and I run out of good defenders too fast. 
   
3. I positioned fyrdwells too close: they should have remained further back, out of range of fireballs. Then when the wizards delved deep into my territory, I could have had a stack of about 8-9 full health fyrdwells ready to attack. Instead, they were with my main stack and suffered from maelstrom and fireballs and were taken out on defence one by one.
   

Overall, very interesting experience to wage war against competent use of spell casters (AI in FFH2 is very bad at this). I have more thoughts about the game, but I’ll wait to see if I’m alive or not next turn.

[coldrain]

In the end, I was finished off by Miguelito on turn 103. Reading his thread after I was eliminated: He continued against Q and was able to do significant damage, even against the Hippus world spell boosted horse archers. Today both Bing and Q conceded in discord, but I'll wait for "official" concession before commenting anything revealing in other threads.

My first PBEM game was fun and interesting, although I'm slightly dissapointed that it ended so fast. I was planning my economy and tech path for a longer game, but obviously it didn't pan out as I hoped. In hindsight and with full map knowledge, I notice some mistakes but that was expected for first time with competent human opponents. I enjoyed the game regardless and will join next one for sure. 

Lesson number one from this game was: Scout better! My poor exploration in the early game allowed Miguelito to found Hogsmeade very close to me as a springboard for later invasion. Plus it was a good city site too (I had the advantage of EXP boosted settler production, so I maybe could have founded there first). Building more scouts/warriors instead of the early granaries would have made more sense.
Lesson two: mobile collateral damage (mages) is deadly. In need my own to defend against such military power. PoLs were nice, but the constant spell damage was brutal, especially after Miguelito gained maelstrom.
Lesson three: Ancient forests take long time to grow. I would have benefitted from a few more grassland farms to acelerate city growth while waiting for Way of the Forests technology and ancient forests. At some point, couple of my cities in hilly terrain required a whopping 8 or 9 turns to grow form size 4 to 5 or so. This was way too slow. I liked skipping calendar and agrarianism in favor of early cottages and faster religion founding, but i should have built more grass farms anyway. 
Lesson four: This is a bit more subjective, but I didn't enjoy Ljosalfar as much I liked Svaltalfar. To be fair, I've never played Svaltalfar in PBEM, but in single player at least the recon unit strength bonus really makes hunters and fawns A LOT better. They basically turn into 2-move bronze axes. A Ljosalfar hunter/fawn is much weaker and I could not get decent odds against Mig's axemen in any point of the game.
A final note: I was planning for a much longer game, so I never had time to invest into the arcane tech path and leverage my ARC trait. Had I spawned further away form Miguelito, then maybe I would have had the time to reach mages (maybe).

These were the first onservations that I could think of. Lurkers (and players when the game is called officially): Feel free to comment or point out what I could have done better!

[mackoti]

First Mages would not helped you at all, in best scenario would had helped Auror making Miguelito using world spell earlier. 
Second the map was realy small and having a trait which  you couldnt use at all made a very dificult ride.
Third i realy enjoyed your reports. TY very much, and I hope you continue to play and even play togheder in next game.

[coldrain]

First Mages would not helped you at all, in best scenario would had helped Auror making Miguelito using world spell earlier. 
Second the map was realy small and having a trait which  you couldnt use at all made a very dificult ride.
Third i realy enjoyed your reports. TY very much, and I hope you continue to play and even play togheder in next game.

Thanks for the feedback!

After reading Mig's thread, I found out that Gilden was killed at 1,5% odds while defending against a fireball . I'm curious what military unit or tactics would have been the most effective way to defend against wizards during the first war? Mages were too far away, and I struggled a lot with hunters/fawns as they had very poor chances against bronze weapon swords on hills. I got Priests of Leaves just in time to prevent my capital from falling, but even with them + tigers I could only sit and defend my capital.

[xist10]

I think Gilden was the best unit ?
Against a group of weak units (okay, empower2 fireballs aren't "weak") a Unit with a suffient strength and many first strikes (free combat rounds)
If Gilden survives the first turn and has 2 or more promotions free? Drill3 or even drill4 should be possible and enough to win flawless against the fireballs. If Mig throws more fireballs at the problem, a Combat3+ Gilden is a possibility and should need a damage spell, not a summon to deal with. - I'm not sure, but Guerilla1 instead of Drill2 could be a mistake.
Behind that, amass your troops and outheal the collateral damage with 1 healer - your PoL are okay in this regard. Maybe a few more archers (drill2+ for less collateral or defence bonus if not enough XP) as secondary stack defenders, if Gilden got a bad fight.
But I'm not sure, if it was clever to throw your tigers against the swordmen - I think they got XP from it ?

Offensive is not easy, because the wizards had a strike range of 4 - 1th movement, cast haste, 2nd movement, frieball with 2 movement.
You need a ability to strike at the wizards. Option 1) enough (strong) troops. I'm not sure, but I think you triggered the WS maybe a bit to early ? - this could requiere to sit in the capital and amass troops (under the dead Gilden)
Option 2) assasins - I think fyrdwell instead of assasins could be a mistake - but against floating eyes ?

But this is only eyeballing, I played exact 0 games EitB and only a few FFH2 games.

[coldrain]

Yeah, I think assassins could have been the better choice instead of fyrdwells. Or I would have had to position the fyrdwells further back, out of range of maelstrom and fireballs. I'm also curious if longbows (strength 6/8 when equipped with bronze weapons) would have been good? Bowyers technology that enables them is about 40% more expensive than stirrups, so I would have arrived there much later. Perhaps the greatest hinderance was the fact that I played as the elves: no catapults (easy access to collateral damage, even during blocked spell casting) and no chariots (great mobility and offencive power, available much earlier than horse archers/fyrdwells).

[mackoti]

Yeah, I think assassins could have been the better choice instead of fyrdwells. Or I would have had to position the fyrdwells further back, out of range of maelstrom and fireballs. I'm also curious if longbows (strength 6/8 when equipped with bronze weapons) would have been good? Bowyers technology that enables them is about 40% more expensive than stirrups, so I would have arrived there much later. Perhaps the greatest hinderance was the fact that I played as the elves: no catapults (easy access to collateral damage, even during blocked spell casting) and no chariots (great mobility and offencive power, available much earlier than horse archers/fyrdwells).

No chariots is a big minus, i think cats wouldnot elped very much as you culdt get to mage  befor they get you...

[Miguelito]

Hello coldrain,
I very much enjoyed your thread. Again, great first time performance .
I think the only thing that you could have done differently would have been to keep as much of your army as possible out of range of Maelstrom (and fireballs) and hit on first strike. You had an impressive amount of units recruited for the second round. And yes, assassins probably would have worked better. I was lucky that I could just catch Auror's assassin stack on first strike after removing culture from a city, but I had no adequate defense against them besides combat promotions on the wizards and high mobility to get first strike.
Anyways, I think what I want to convey is, holding out on defense doesn't really work in multiplayer in my opinion, the first strike carries too much of an advantage.
But also, honestly not that much that you could do, against powerful magic and without even your own tigers.
And since you wondered in the thread, I realized just after sending in the turn where I sent the first sword stack forwards that I could have used my worldspell to disable yours, but then it was too late already. I was a bit surprised that you triggered it, as from your thread I gathered that you had not realized the first wizards where ready already. Interesting alternate history where I use the WS. I was feeling like I could go and catch your capital in 3 runs which at the moment seemed pretty much undefended. But maybe you would have stopped me there or somewhere beyond, and anyways, I possibly would have gone down against Auror soon after, without a worldspell to shield me from his mages.
One more thing, I tried to actively stop you from scouting our layout, especially where our capital was, so it wouldn't be all that clear how we exclusively had settled eastwards up on you (nothing personal, north and west was water, and south jungle/peaks and an incredible awesome city site that Auror was always going to get first )

Good luck for the next game!

[coldrain]

Thanks! It was very difficult to fight against the wizards, but I think I now have better understanding how to counter them if needed in a new game. You also had the perfect palace mana for the map: metamagic for floating eye, body for haste and fire for fireballs. I think your decision to get early KotE and adepts gave you a lot of value in form of map knowledge, intel on neigbour's armies and ability to move units around fast. I didn't mention this at all in the turn reports, but during the game I wondered why hawks were moved from hunting tech, those would have given me early warning of your advancing swordsman stack and wizards. Even if I had hawks, your tactics with floating eye recon, hasted units and far reaching spells would have been very hard to counter. Well played!

About the use of my world spell: Yes, it was a tough decision at the time, but I thought I could capture Hogsmeade and your copper city, thereby giving me an advantage while I was waiting for the prophet to spawn (about 4 to 6 turns at that time?). I would then bulb priesthood and have Priests of Leaves to summon tigers and fight more effectively. I was also worried that you were close to sorcery and it would be devastating if I decided to delay my world spell, only for it to be blocked when I would need it the most. If you had blocked spell casting when you advanced the swordsman stack, maybe I would have lost more cities or my capital too.

A final note: Looking at the map shape after I trades maps, I could see why you prioritized expanding towards me. The mountain ranges and jungle in your south was a lot less appealing than the rice/gold spot or the grassland river north of it. The only exception was the double gem + wet rice spot towards Aurorarcher, but that was behind the mountain range and would have been a nightmare to defend. And I didn't even know about the rice between us until my first hunter scouted the area, who was promptly killed by your hasted warriors